Mystery of Lost M.P.H.: Pitchers Weren’t Hurt, Their Fastballs Were

Major League Baseball officials and fans are thrilled when they see radar gun readings flashing triple digits on stadium scoreboards. But for every one who threw a pitch 100 miles per hour or faster this season, other healthy, hard-throwing pitchers caused scouts to bang their radar guns and check their batteries.

Tim Lincecum, Dan Haren, Zack Greinke, Joba Chamberlain, Javier Vazquez, Francisco Rodriguez and Oliver Perez were among the pitchers who were not injured but lost speed during the season.

Fangraphs.com, a statistical analysis Web site, noted that C. J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers was down to 90.49 m.p.h. from 93.37 last season and Vin Mazzaro of the Oakland Athletics dipped to 91.26 from 93.07. Baseball Info Solutions showed that Dodgers reliever Jonathan Broxton’s fastball slowed to 95.3 from 97.7.

These days, statistical variations are often attributed to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, especially with stricter testing in force.

But the reason for a dip in speed can be a basic, physical one, even if a pitcher feels he is healthy, said Mike Marshall, who won a Cy Young Award in 1974 with the Dodgers and was a dominant reliever.

“When baseball pitchers lose release velocity, it is always a result of the decrease in joint stability,” said Marshall, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, coaches athletes and offers advice on his Web site, drmikemarshall.com. “Whether that joint is the shoulder joint or the elbow joint depends on how baseball pitchers apply force to their pitches.”

Marshall argues that pitchers can maintain or regain velocity by correcting their motion, weight training and exercise.

Dan Warthen, the Mets’ pitching coach, dealt with the diminished velocity of Perez and Rodriguez. Neither pitcher reported arm injuries or pain, but Warthen cited the shoulder capsule as the possible problem.

“Sometimes the capsule can get loose without having any pain,” he said. “You have your fast-twitch muscles, the tension muscles, that are supposed to release and give you velocity. But they are stretched out and don’t have that tension or that torque they once had.”

Warthen said that if pitchers are not injured and do not require surgery, it might be impossible to recover their velocity.

Mitch Williams, an MLB Network analyst and former relief pitcher with a high-90s fastball, never had an arm injury but had his ups and downs.

Joba Chamberlain was among the pitchers who were not injured but lost speed during the season.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

“You have to make sure you’re getting back in your windup and letting your kick leg get as high as it’s going to go you as you start down the mound,” Williams said. “A lot of times, we break down on our back side and our post leg, and it kills arm speed and does not allow the arm to work. Your arm gets stuck behind you.”

Williams said that if a pitcher still cannot get back to peak velocity after examining video, comparing his motion from the time when he was throwing at top speed, correcting flaws and ruling out injuries, the default diagnosis, dead arm, goes back to a time before M.R.I.’s and kinesiology entered the game.

While some teams prefer to rest the pitcher and give time off during a dead-arm period, Williams prefers the opposite approach. “When I had dead arm, it meant I had to get in the bullpen and throw more,” he said.

Williams would do more bullpen throwing and long throwing as he put it, not long tossing.

“Get about 120 feet apart and use the same mechanics you use on the mound,” he said. “Throw it on a line, downhill. Don’t put an arc on it like you do in long tossing.”

In the long term, Williams said, pitch counts will only reduce velocity and increase injuries.

“You can hurt your arm on one pitch,” he said. “If your mechanics are sound, you go out and you throw. That’s all there is to it. To me, a dead arm was just lactic acid built up in the muscles. The only way to get it out is to use it.”

Dr. Glenn Fleisig, the chairman of research at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., whose president and founder is Dr. James Andrews, the arm expert, frequently sees pitchers whose velocity has decreased.

Fleisig said that if the player, coaches and trainers think nothing is physically wrong, they might not be looking hard enough.

“The only two possible reasons a pitcher would have less velocity would be they changed their mechanics or they have less strength,” he said.

Fleisig said he believed that pitchers changed mechanics because of an underlying medical problem or that they strayed from the correct form. And the changes might be so subtle that they cannot be detected by normal observation.

Fleisig uses computerized analysis to help locate delivery problems that might be missed by coaches and trainers.

A player goes to the indoor lab in Birmingham and has reflective markers attached to his body. After he warms up, he throws pitches 60 feet 6 inches from a mound to a catcher or a strike zone. Eight high-speed cameras track the motion of the markers.

The technology is similar to that used for special effects in movies and video games. The difference is that the American Sports Medicine Institute has a computer program that calculates a pitcher’s motion and joint forces, and compares the results with an elite database.

Over time, a pitcher might spontaneously correct a subtle flaw that was never identified.

“It can correct itself,” Fleisig said. “But it might not.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 17, 2010, on page SP6 of the National edition with the headline: Mystery of Lost M.P.H.: Pitchers Weren’t Hurt, Their Fastballs Were. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe